Early activism

In April 1967 Garver was teaching at Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA. Student protests over inhumane conditions in dormitories and cafeterias led to a general uprising against apartheid Louisiana. As one of the few white instructors, Garver was able to use his safe position to help facilitate the forbidden presence of SNCC activists and Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael on the campus. It became evident that Garver's activist role demanded his return to the North.

I was guided by the great sermon Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered at the Riverside Church that month. Dr. King ended the silence of the civil rights movement on the Vietnam War, making what remains a prophetic and courageous indictment of the oppressive structure of U.S. imperialism, linked to poverty and racial oppression in the USA. When I returned to the North, I joined the movement against the Vietnam War and became a draft resister.

NAM

Democratic Agenda

More than 1,200 people attended the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee initiated Democratic Agenda Conference held November 16-18, 1979, at the International Inn and Metropolitan AM Church in Washington 1 DC. The conference focused on "corporate power'; as the key barrier to "economic and political democracy," concepts many Democratic Agenda participants defined as "socialism.'

The Democratic Agenda meetings attempted to develop anti-corporate alternatives" through influencing the direction of the Democratic Party during the period leading to the July 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York.

Back in Boston

On December 9, 2006, a Boston DSA member’s meeting heard Paul Garver lead a discussion on “Coca-Cola, Columbia and the Unions”. "Paul was a DSA NPC member in the 1980s who has recently “semi-retired” back to the Boston area after 16 years in Switzerland where he was coordinator of the Department of Transnational Corporations for the International Union of Food Workers (IUF). He relayed some of his experiences trying to aid union organizing in Colombia, beset by death squads, guerillas, and an unsympathetic state."[17]

Support for Bernie Sanders

Socialist Caucus at 2016 DNC

Over 300 Sanders activists attended Democratic Socialists of America’s “Socialist Caucus” on Wednesday afternoon, July 27th, 3016. In the audience were over 100 Sanders delegates, including most of DSA’s 55 member-delegates; they were joined by Larry Sanders, Senator Sanders’ brother, and the Senator’s son, Levi Sanders.

Numerous participants remarked on social media that the caucus was one of the most substantive meetings at the convention. A score of participants joined DSA on the spot and the DSA table rapidly sold out of its 50 bright red DSA “Continuing the Political Revolution” T-shirts.

Join us in this webcast to take a hard look at the place we're in as a labor movement - and consider how we can make the labor movement be a leading force in the resistance to Trump and the fight for a better world.

What's our strategy? What kinds of alliances do we need? Do we just play defense?

In the face of National Right to Work, vicious attacks on workers of color in and out of the workplace, escalating divisions in the AFLCIO and the Democratic Party, and more we've got our work cut out for us. Let's figure out how to win.

Democratic Socialists of America - Boston Public Group

Just a reminder that this group is not officially an organ of Democratic Socialists of America, although the Admins are members, and a lot of members post here from time to time. We reserve the right to kick people out for trolling or spamming, but otherwise we don't do a lot of vetting of would-be group members. Which is cool, because we value everybody's point of view. But views posted in this group are those of the poster, only.

DSA Labor Statement of Support for Danny Fetonte

In August 2017 a group of Democratic Socialists of America labor activists issued a joint statement of support for newly elected DSA NPC member Danny Fetonte. The group was fighting back against other DSAers wanting to remove Fetonte for his past work for a Texas law enforcement union.